Current Climate Talks Raise Doubts About Post-Kyoto Treaty

Climate change is the biggest threat humanity faces today. Opening for the climate current climate talks on May 2, hosted by Germany and Mexico, in Petersberg, Germany, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said, “We need to show the world how serious the threat is.” The serious threat of climate change requires a successor to the Kyoto Protocol be crafted. Can the Petersberg conference, where representatives of 45 countries are meeting through May 4, help move things along so it can created?

German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen sure hopes so. He said the main reason for the current conference is “to get the process moving again.” The next UN climate summit will be in Cancun, Mexico, on November 29 through December 10. Roettgen said the goal of the current conference in Germany is to “pave the way to a good result in Cancun. He added, “Nobody wants another big disappointment.” In other words, nobody wants a repeat of Copenhagen, where only a ‘goal’ could be decided upon.

The goal of the Copenhagen Accord, backed by around 120 nations, is to limit the increase in average world temperatures to below 2 Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during the opening of the conference, “We have to realize that we have quite a long way to go to reach the 2-degree-goal.”

What could not be agreed on in Copenhagen is how to reach that goal and how to provide funds to reach it. The Copenhagen Accord outlines $100 billion in annual climate aid from 2020. Reuters reported that a document prepared for Petersberg by Germany and Mexico said, “Financing negotiations seem to have been caught by the vicious circle ‘no money, no action – no action, no money”

On Monday, Yvo De Boer, outgoing head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said in a speech that that the fate of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012 was on “everybody’s minds but, unfortunately, no one’s lips.” Kyoto binds almost 40 nations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.

De Boer told the 45 representatives, it is their “political responsibility as ministers to take this thorny topic by the horns…and that in turn will mean the end of the Kyoto Protocol.” De Boer added that it appeared “highly unlikely” that Kyoto backers would agree to new targets after 2012 that were binding if the U.S. only had targets in its domestic laws. Climate change legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Fuel
Planting only 6 percent of the continental United States with biomass crops such as hemp would supply all current domestic demands for oil and gas.
Did you know the average American spends 33 of 40 working hours to support their need for energy? It's true; 80 percent of the total monetary living expense for everything we do is ultimately wrapped up in energy costs; from the energy it takes to make the food we eat, to fuel for the cars we drive, to the manufacturing, storage and transportation of the products we buy. And 80 percent of solid and airborne pollution in our environment can be blamed on fossil energy sources. It is estimated that America has already exhausted 80 percent of its fossil fuel reserves.
Industrial hemp is the number one biomass producer on earth, meaning an actual contender for an economically competitive, clean burning fuel. Hemp has four times the biomass and cellulose potential and eight times the methanol potential of its closest competing crop - corn. Burning coal and oil are the greatest sources of acid rain; biomass fuels burn clean and contain no sulphur and produce no ash during combustion. The cycle of growing and burning biomass crops keeps the world s carbon dioxide level at perfect equilibrium, which means that we are less likely to experience the global climactic changes (greenhouse effect) brought about by excess carbon dioxide and water vapors after burning fossil fuels.